Why creationists should rejoice at two skulls found

Media hype has again had some Christians “rattled” and some evolutionists crowing triumphally. Recent newspapers carried headlines like: “Most complete ape-man skull to date has been unveiled.” But the facts are such that not only should Christians not be worried, they should actually rejoice in this fossil find!

Facts

The two skulls found in South Africa are classified as Paranthropus robustus. Paranthropus (meaning roughly “parallel to man”) used to be called Australopithecus robustus, and is still grouped in the family of australopithecines, of which the famous “Lucy” is the best-known example.

There have long been many expert evolutionist anatomists (e.g. Dr. Charles Oxnard) who have demonstrated that the idea that Lucy and her kind were human ancestors is not compatible with their anatomy. Despite desperate attempts to demonstrate that these walked upright, for example, they have shown that this could not have been the case, and that their anatomy is not “in-between” but is somewhat unique—i.e. a unique extinct group of creatures, not in the human line.

CT scans of the middle ear structure of such australopithecines have recently confirmed this—they did not walk habitually upright.

Very recently, even Lucy herself was found to have the locking wrist anatomy of a knucklewalker.

Even those evolutionists who still vigorously defend Lucy/australopithecines as man’s ancestors have long ago dismissed robustus as a human ancestor. In fact this is one of the reasons for the renaming, as it is believed that while Lucy etc. were evolving into people, Paranthropus was doing something else, in “parallel,” as it were.

Creationists should rejoice whenever complete specimens in good condition are found, because it is then easy to distinguish between the clearly human and the clearly nonhuman. The frustration is when there are a few tiny fragments, laced with rich doses of evolutionary speculation and imagination.

In this case, the specimens are apparently very well preserved, which makes it clear, even to dedicated evolutionists, that they belong to a group which is not ancestral to man.

So why the fuss? It seems that, unable to clearly demonstrate “human evolution” from transitional forms, evolution-enthusiasts in the media will apply the label apeman even to creatures which evolutionary theorists themselves have declared were not in the human line.

In order to help you learn a way of thinking that will make you able to “read between the lines” when such announcements are made in the future, I strongly recommend the video The Image of God and the classic book by Marvin LubenowBones of Contention.

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